A room at Reni Pani Jungle Lodge, near Satpura National Park. BELOW Diners at Brittania & Co Restaurant in Mumbai
1 If you prefer to travel under your own steam, start by booking your international flight – this itinerary works best if you fly into Mumbai and out of Delhi. Several airlines offer a direct route on both legs of the journey, including Air India, BA, Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic (from around £500 with airindia.in). Cheaper flights are available, but usually involve a stopover in the Middle East.
2 Once in Mumbai, check in to Le Sutra, a small boutique hotel decorated with Indian art (£70; lesutra.in). Spend a day lunch at Britannia & Co Restaurant. Its owners are Parsis – Iranian Zoroastrian house, situated on the of Applied Art (jjiaa.org). End with a sundowner at the Sea Lounge bar at the Taj Hotel, which overlooks the Gateway of India (tajhotels.com).
3 It’s off to Tadoba National Park, your best bet for tiger sightings. The flight from Mumbai to Nagpur takes 1.5 hours and costs around £30 (with domestic airlines Air India or Jet Airways). The staff at Svasara Jungle Lodge can arrange a pick-up from here (£155pp, including all meals and game drives; svasararesorts.com). The lodge is minutes from the park’s entrance, and offers two daily game drives and nightly screenings of wildlife documentaries shot locally. At the time of going to press, the sale of alcohol in the park was banned, so keep back some duty free for a post-safari G&T.
The grand interior of Shimla’s Raj-era Oberoi Cecil Hotel